Chapter Twelve #2
“You have loved some other woman in this way?”
“She grew to despise me,” he said. “There I was, still young-looking, and she was wasting away. She sent me off, saying she never wished to see me again, saying I had stolen her best years from her and left her with nothing, no children, no legacy, nothing at all. She was quite bitter. I still loved her, but I did as she asked, of course. I pined for her for a hundred years after she died. I would go to her grave and…” He shook himself.
“What is wrong with me? One thing I should have learned a long time ago is not to tell the woman one is currently in love with how much one loved another woman.”
Elizabeth didn’t feel threatened by that woman or by his love for her, however.
It seemed, instead, to reassure her. He was steadfast, then, her Mr. Darcy.
He was truly trying to send her off to find a lover for her own good, because he did not wish her to experience this same pain.
She bowed her head. “Of course you have loved other women,” she said softly.
“You have been living lives, one after the other, for centuries before I was born. It would be foolish to think otherwise.” But the sheer magnitude of this man being in love with her now seemed practically overwhelming.
“I think we must not spend too much time thinking of what will come,” said Mr. Darcy. “There will be pain in our future, but there is always pain, in all futures. We cannot avoid it, so let us not dwell on it. Let us, instead, look for the pleasantness we can have together now.”
“Now,” she said, “while you will not touch me.”
“I shall touch you,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But not tonight.”
She felt a ripple move through the center of her, the denial and the promise all twined up with some internal, weak, and feminine part of her. “Why didn’t you make her a vampire?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Darcy. “Well, I never have.”
“Can you not do it, then?”
“I suppose I could,” he said. “I know how.”
“Why don’t you?”
“It’s frowned upon, for one thing,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Vampires are always having conversations about it, about how everyone is always wanting to make new vampires, and how every new vampire is a threat to us, because it makes us more vulnerable to discovery. It always ends up with some musings about how, if vampires got their way, every human would be turned and then we’d die out because we’d have nothing to drink and sustain us. ”
“You can survive on the blood of animals?”
“No,” he said. “But it’s all foolish, for I don’t think it would go that way, even if vampires did turn humans on a whim. The truth is, it often goes badly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if one doesn’t take precise care with the turn, leaves the human without vampire blood for too long, their body heals and reanimates, but their mind is permanently damaged. They become a raging, thirsty beast, running amok and biting people.”
She gazed at him solemnly.
“I think,” he said, “with you, with our bond, there’s no concern there. I should feel you through it, through all of it.”
She looked away quickly.
“Ah, we were not speaking of turning you, I see,” he said. He cleared his throat. “There are other concerns, though I suppose no one knows if turning vampires makes the sire go mad sometimes, or if vampires who have already gone mad sometimes start making far too many new vampires.”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Well, the Bingleys’ maker was quite old when he did what he did.
He made them all within days of each other.
He made Caroline first, and no one knows quite what happened, but he then made six other fledgling vampires and after that, he locked himself and all seven of the new young ones up to face the sun.
Bingley and the other two clawed their way to freedom, but the rest weren’t so lucky.
Caroline has a burn on her ankle. It’s a bad scar. ”
“What happened to yours?” she said. “Your sire?”
“Accidental death,” said Darcy.
“Was he different after he turned you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know him before.
But I barely knew him at all. I consented to a tryst with him, and he bit me in the course of it, and it felt rather wondrous, as I’m sure you are aware of, and then I would have let him do anything to me.
I don’t know why he turned me. It was a strange thing to do, for he barely knew me at the time.
Maybe he thought the way I sucked his cock was inspired. I can’t say.”
Elizabeth was stunned again. “You… with a man.”
“I was human, then,” he said with a shrug, as if this was an excuse. “Do you wish me to make you a vampire, Lizzy?”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“It would solve certain problems. I would no longer be able to harm you in that way. I could not drain you of blood.”
“But you wouldn’t like my blood in the same way,” she said. “Would you? I would not be your sirensong.”
“No,” he said. “You would not.”
“And the bond?”
“Severed,” he said.
“So, we wouldn’t feel each other.”
“Well, there might be temporary bonds between us, from blood drinking. If we were at each other often enough, it might seem as if we were bonded,” he said.
“We might be at first. We’d grow tired of each other eventually, however.
Vampires always do. The Bingleys, who stay together, have all manner of long-buried slights and angers that plague them.
Caroline and Bingley, they torture each other, truly. ”
“And she and you,” said Elizabeth. “That is some long-buried pain which she cannot let go of. That could happen to us?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“You loved Caroline once.”
“I never loved Caroline.”
“You had something with her.”
“Aye, we shared each other’s bed, drank each other’s blood, but it wasn’t love. It was a fascination I had and it passed rather quickly.”
She felt alarmed by this. “Did you think it love at the time?”
“Lizzy, what I feel for you is twenty times as intense as anything I felt for Caroline,” he said.
“But if I am not your sirensong, will you still feel it? If we are not bonded, will you still feel it?”
“I take it you don’t wish me to turn you, after all? Not even if it would mean that we were equals, then, both vampires.”
“We wouldn’t be equals. You’d be my maker, and I’d be your fledgling.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But if you wish to see London two hundred years from now, you let me know.”
“You’d do it, then?”
“I have told you, Lizzy, I would do anything for you.”
Her lips parted. “Do you wish to turn me?”
“I am frightened of the consequences,” he said.
“I have never done it before. But I think of your growing old and dying and…” He looked away.
“It is foolish. We have known each other a very brief time. I well know that feelings, even strong feelings, can change, sometimes abruptly. I know it, and yet…” He looked back at her.
“I must not give in to my every whim and wish when it comes to you, Lizzy. I must be careful with you. You are precious to me.”